Study Partners
by glasshibou
Summary: Sarah is a very busy student with an insufferable amount of research to do. Lucky for her, her friends are awfully sweet... Right? For Aurora, who guessed correctly and requested fluff with certain gifts.


Sarah woke to the smell of fresh ginger snaps wafting through the air. As wakeups went, it was considerably more agreeable than the blaring of her alarm clock or the mid morning sun streaming through her window, alerting her that if she didn't hurry, she'd be late for a meeting with her advisor. Again. Dr. DeWitt was starting to lose patience with her and her lack of progress, Sarah could tell.

Without even opening her eyes, Sarah reached out from under her covers and felt around until she felt the plate sitting on her bedside table. The cookies were still warm and, when she brought one to her lips, tasted _marvelous_. They were soft and delicate in the way that she loved but could never manage to replicate herself. And so thoughtful of Didymus, too; the poor little fox was almost as stressed as she was. She'd have to thank him the next time she saw him.

In fact, she'd have to thank all of her friends from beyond the mirror. The past few months had been particularly busy for her as she tried to track down the origins of her Labyrinth book for her dissertation. They'd been so busy, in fact, that not only had she not seen her friends for much longer than a few minutes at a time, she'd completely missed the first of the gifts they'd left her for quite a few days.

Sarah was certain that the glittering peridot, which so exactly matched her eyes that it was uncanny, was from Ludo. After all, who else could find a gem of that size and clarity? Besides, he liked shiny things almost as much as Hoggle.

The bundle of dried lavender, which she had hanging up beside her bed, was almost certainly from the dwarf. While he liked his shiny things too, he, at least, knew that no matter how pretty a stone was, it just wasn't going to help her in her research. The lavender helped her to drift off to sleep every night, no matter how stressed she was feeling before climbing into bed. It was almost as if it was spelled.

And now Didymus had brought her one of her favorite sweets, which, admittedly, she thought was perhaps a bit odd. The fox didn't seem like much of a baker, but Sarah was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

She rolled out from under her blankets, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and set about her morning. The cookies she placed in an airtight container in her kitchen, so they wouldn't spoil as quickly. If she made any headway at all in her research that day, they'd be a treat for in the evening.

The cookies were promptly put from her mind, but not the gifts themselves. It was strange-they almost always appeared when she wasn't expecting it, which wasn't like her friends. They knew she didn't want to be bothered while she worked, but she hoped that she didn't give them the impression that they couldn't talk to her. And every time Didymus came by to tell her his search for the origins of the Labyrinth story had turned up nothing-again-he neglected to mention anything about the gifts. And Sarah was usually so distracted that she only remembered to ask after he'd already gone.

Her collection grew day by day. The peridot now held down a stack of rich paper, which Sarah was pretty certain was actually genuine vellum. She was half afraid to have it looked at, and she was _definitely_ nervous to write on it. So it stayed on a corner of her desk, collecting dust under her collection of trinkets. She couldn't guess which of her friends would have given her the vellum, or the inkwell, complete with a stick of India ink and a dip pen. The pen and the ink she did use, even if it took her a while to stop spotting her fingertips with flecks of the dye. Her research notes never looked so professional.

And it was behind the ink and pen Sarah found herself later that evening. She rolled the empty pen between her hands, listening to the ivory surface clack against her delicate alumni ring. Dr DeWitt hadn't been happy when Sarah showed up in her office with nothing to show for the hours she'd spent in the library. She was even _less_ amused when Sarah said she was reluctant to bring in her copy of _Labyrinth_ again-which she was starting to think was perhaps the only copy in the world. She'd already combed through databases, but the book bore no ISBN, just as it bore no author, or editor, or even a place of publication.

Just the single word Labyrinth in curling golden script.

Sarah closed her eyes and leaned back, staring up at the ceiling. Maybe it was time to switch the focus of her research, as DeWitt had been hinting at for the past three months. She groaned and sat up straight in her chair.

"I'm not going to let a children's novel defeat me," she said, glaring at the book in question.

Except where before it had been sitting, quite alone on the vellum beside the peridot paperweight, atop it now sat a cup of steaming tea. And a crystal.

Sarah was _sure_ that none of her friends would drop something off while she was _right there_ and leave so quickly. She was doubly sure that none of them would leave a crystal behind.

"Didymus?" She called out into the air. "Sir Didymus? Please-I need to speak to you."

The crystal was perfectly still and slightly opaque, so she could see her distorted, worried reflection in it. And then behind her own face was Sir Didymus's.

"I wanted to thank you, and Hoggle, and Ludo," she said carefully, testing the waters, "for all of the lovely gifts you've been giving me these past few months."

Sir Didymus furrowed his brows and looked around her room, noticing all of the new things in their places.

"Your thanks are surely welcome, my lady; but it was not I, nor was it my brother, nor our compatriot who gifted you these items."

"I thought you would say that," Sarah said with a sigh. "Well, then, I suppose I'd better go thank him."

* * *

Walking through her mirror as if it were nothing more substantial than a beaded curtain was weird, but perhaps not as weird as standing in front of the wooden door to the castle she never thought she'd see again. Didymus assured her that everything would be okay, but that he would defend her to the death in any case. It was meant to be reassuring, Sarah knew, but it spooked her a bit all the same.

"Perhaps it would be best if my lady knocked on the door," Didymus said, urging her to do something, anything other than hold her fist up in the air.

"I'm getting there," Sarah said, finally summoning her courage. She rapped twice on the door, wondering if anyone would hear it anyway. It opened, which didn't surprise her at all, but Didymus dashing in _did_ catch her off guard.

"I will go and find him," the fox said, darting away before Sarah could ask him not to. But before she could even try to catch him, the fox was gone and she was standing alone in front of the door, which had conveniently swung shut. So much for his overzealous promises of protection.

Sarah huffed and glanced down at the crystal, which she'd wrapped in a spare cloth to bring with her.

"This is all your fault," she said to it, gazing at the surface. It reflected her own face back to her, distorted with the curvature. If she expected to see anything else, she was sorely disappointed. If the crystal had never shown up, she never would have known that it wasn't her friends leaving her gift, and she certainly never would have ever thought of returning. And now she had to thank the Goblin King, of all people, and it really did feel like her world had been turned upside down.

"Well," drawled out a voice somewhere above her. "That certainly took you long enough."

Sarah glanced up to the top of the staircase that she wasn't entirely sure had been there two minutes ago.

"Excuse me?" she asked, incredulous. He peered at her down his nose, as if willing an explanation into her brain. When she didn't seem to immediately understand, he sighed deeply-as if aggrieved, which Sarah found a little amusing-and descended the stairs.

"The gifts, you silly girl. I've been sending them for months, and you haven't so much as put a pen to paper in thanks."

 _That_ , Sarah actually laughed at.

"It isn't as if they had gift tags! And… Besides, I thought they were from my friends. You were not the first person I would have suspected to be behind them. They were…" Sarah paused and bit her lip, unsure how to articulate her thoughts without coming across as rude.

"Unappreciated," he sniffed, now at her level.

" _Helpful_ ," she corrected him. "Seriously helpful. I was really stressing out, and you helped. It was… Thoughtful," she finished. _Kind_ was the word she thought but did not say. If she didn't have incontrovertible proof that he was the one leaving the little gifts, she never would have believed it.

He snorted but otherwise seemed to warm up to her statement.

"What ever was causing you such a bother anyway? Your friends," he said the word as if it pained him, "said you were quite distressed."

Sarah nodded. It was… sweet of him to care about her wellbeing without even knowing what was causing her to be upset. _Sweet_ was't a word she was used to associating with the Goblin King, but she was finding that she liked it.

"It's… the book. I decided to write my dissertation on it, and where… certain elements might have come from, but I was struggling. It doesn't help that the book doesn't seem to exist anywhere besides on my bookshelf, either…" It was, upon reflection, a little bit embarrassing to be admitting this; Sarah knew from experience that the tips of her ears were most likely pink from her blush.

"Well, of course there isn't," he scoffed. "That _is_ the only copy in your world; it's something of a well known tale-a prophecy, if you will-down here. Not that your advisor could be expected to know that."

Part of her was excited to know that for all these years, she'd held a piece of literature not just from another culture, but an entire culture largely unknown to humans. The other part of her despaired because surely she'd have to change her topic now. Jareth watched the smile on her lips falter.

"However, I suppose it would not be _unreasonable_ to have a human friend of mine authenticate it. For the purposes of your scholarship, of course. You would then be able to use it, correct?"

Sarah was about to open her mouth to thank him profusely, but a sly grin stole the words from her lips.

"Naturally, your findings would suffer from not having the complete picture; it is all well and good to bring the authenticated source to dear Dr. DeWitt, but I fear that will only take you so far. No, no, you require more study."

A catch. Sarah _knew_ there would have to be a catch if he was involved, but she found herself feeling slightly betrayed all the same.

"And what would this additional study require?" She asked, not one to back down from the challenge he issued. His smile only widened.

"A perusal of the royal libraries, I think. Perhaps, say, every Saturday starting at ten in the morning? The archival section is _very_ delicate; naturally, you will need the correct guidance, and naturally, I will be there for assistance. So, Sarah, what do you say?"

It didn't sound at all like what she'd been expecting, which was a good thing; she'd hate to have to run the labyrinth again, all for school

"It's a date," she decided, not sure if she should qualify it as a study date or not.

"Indeed it is," he purred.


End file.
